There, now they won't be able to hear us!
Jesus Christ! How fucking stupid can I be?
He looked into the rear seat of the Buick. The officer was on the floor, on his back. His eyes were a bloody mess.
I shot him right between the eyes.
I was aiming for his chest.
He moved slowly to the rear of the Buick, then ran to the truck next in line behind it. As he ran, he realized that the intensity of the firing had slowed. And then it stopped entirely.
There was the sound of moaning, and somewhere down the road a man was screaming, and then there was a shot and the screaming stopped.
"Ceasefire! Ceasefire!" Everly called. Weston turned to see him running up the road. He ran past Weston to the rear of the truck next in line. All of a sudden, he had a machete in his hand, and Weston saw it slash viciously down-ward.
My God, he's killing the wounded!
And you're acting like a Boy Scout, not like a Marine officer!
What did you expect, that this would be conducted in a gentlemanly fash-ion, with scrupulous attention to the Geneva Convention?
He made his way through the convoy to the pickup truck at its rear, desper-ately hoping he would not come across a wounded Japanese and have to kill him.
He did not. Taking their cue from Everly, the Filipinos quickly put their machetes to use, taking care of the problem of the wounded Japanese.
Weston saw a Filipino climb one of the fragile-looking telephone poles lining the road, slash the copper wire with his machete, and then, holding a loose end between his teeth, climb down again.
On the ground, he tugged unsuccessfully to pull the wire from the next pole, cutting his hand in the process, and then shouted angrily in a strange tongue-Tagalog? Weston wondered-which caused two other Filipinos to start climbing poles.
Weston started walking toward the head of the convoy again. Now the Fili-pinos were stripping the Japanese bodies of their weapons, their boots, their ammunition, their bayonets, their leather accoutrements, and their watches, jewelry, and even their spectacles.
The labor detail appeared, and Lieutenant Lomero began to load each man with the supplies and captured weaponry to be carried off. There were more supplies than men, and the attempt to carry off the fuel proved to be a disaster. There was no way to decant the gasoline and kerosene from the drums into the vessels they had brought with them except by putting the drums on their sides and opening the filler hole. More fuel poured onto the ground than into the bottles and barrels and canteens. And the wooden barrels leaked.
Weston returned to the Buick, leaned into the backseat, and finally found the pistol he had seen in the officer's hand.
It looks something like a German Luger, he thought, as he picked it up, then dropped it in horror. It's covered with blood!
He forced himself to pick it up again, then to unfasten the officer's belt, which was also slippery with blood. A spare magazine was in a pouch on the holster. He was tempted to throw the belt and the holster away, but decided he was obliged to take it with him. When he tried to strap it around his waist, it was too small, so he looped it around his neck.
He became aware then that the Buick's engine was still running. He reached over and turned the ignition key off and then removed it. Everly came up to him. "Anytime you're ready, Mr. Weston." "Ready for what?"
"Torch the vehicles and go home," Everly said, and nodded toward the rear of the convoy. Two Filipinos were easily carrying one of the now nearly empty fifty-five-gallon gasoline drums. They stopped at the car, obviously waiting for Everly's permission to upend the drum into the car. "You search him?" Everly asked. "I got his pistol."
"I noticed," Everly said, and then spoke in Spanish to the Filipinos. They got in the car, picked up the Japanese officer's body, and slid it over the side of the car. It landed on its face. Everly carefully went through the offi-cer's pockets, coming up with a wallet, some identification papers, and a pocketknife, which he tossed to one of the Filipinos. Then he removed the officer's wristwatch.
"An Elgin," he said, tossing it to the other Filipino. "Do you suppose he bought it in Chicago, or took it away from some American?"
He waited until the Filipino, who was smiling happily, had strapped the Elgin onto his wrist, and then signaled for them to upend the gas drum into the Buick. As the dregs of the drum gurgled onto the red leather upholstery, he took out his Zippo lighter.
"Wait a minute!" he said. "Jesus Christ, how stupid can I be?"
"What?" Weston asked.
Everly shouted something in Spanish and then repeated it in English.
"Get the people with the bottles and canteens back here," he said, and one of the Filipinos said, "Yes, Sir," and ran down the road. Everly turned to Wes-ton. "These fuel tanks are full. All we have to do is cut the fuel lines, and let it run into the bottles."
"Why didn't I think of that?" Weston asked rhetorically.
"Why didn't I?" Everly said.
The translation of that, Weston thought, is, I didn't expect you to, you 're nothing but a useless fly boy I'm stuck with, but I, the professional Marine, cer-tainly should have.
It took perhaps ten minutes-which seemed to Weston far longer than that-to fill the bottles and canteens from the fuel lines of the Buick and the trucks.
Finally, Everly called, "OK. Torch them!"
He stooped beside a small but growing pool of gasoline spreading from under the Buick.
"You better step back, Mr. Weston," he said.
"Right," Weston said, and took several steps away.
Everly ignited the gasoline and then ran away, grabbing Weston's arm and dragging him into the jungle.
There was a whooshing sound. When Weston looked back, the entire rear half of the Buick was engulfed in flames.
"Sometimes it explodes worse than that," Everly said.
"I suppose," Weston said, somewhat lamely.
"That was a nice head shot you made, Mr. Weston," Everly said. "Right between the eyes. But next time, it might be better if you aimed for the chest."
I am not going to give this sonofabitch the satisfaction of correcting me.
"I knew I could hit him in the head from that distance."
"Yeah, and you did," Everly said, with a touch of what could have been reluctant admiration in his voice. "But it's sometimes better, Mr. Weston, not to take chances."
"Let's get the hell out of here, Everly."
"Aye, aye, Sir," Lieutenant Everly said.
They headed into the jungle. They had gone perhaps fifty yards when Ev-erly had the last word: There was an enormous roar as the fuel tank of one of the trucks exploded.
[ONE]
Office of the Kempeitai Commander for Mindanao
Cagayan de Oro, Misamis-Oriental Province
Mindanao, Commonwealth of the Philippines
1425 Hours 20 October 1942
All but two of the seven officers of the Mindanao Detachment of the Kempeitai were gathered in the office of Lieutenant Colonel Tange Kisho to discuss the outrage on the Bislig-Caraga highway that morning. Present were Tange; Major Ieyasu Matsudaira, his deputy; Captains Matsuo Saikaku and Tokugawa Sadanobu; and Lieutenant Ichikawa Izumo. Lieutenants Okuni Sannjuro and Iemitsu Tokugawa were at the scene of the outrage supervising a ten-man de-tail searching the area.